'Mandela looked his enemy in the eye and held him close'

Mandela's real contribution to humanity was that he chose peace over war and
forgiveness over vengeance, writes South African journalist and author Justice
Malala

Nelson Mandela and Bill Clinton peer through the bars of prison cell where Mandela was jailedPhoto: AP

By Justice Malala

12:54PM GMT 07 Dec 2013

Towards the end of his life, as Nelson Mandela’s lung infection forced him to hospital frequently, criticism of the anti-apartheid icon began to emerge.

In speeches, online chats, newspaper articles and on television talk shows, many here in South Africa began to say Mandela had sold out. He accepted political freedom, they said, and left the economy in the control of rich whites. His legacy, they said as they pointed at the poverty-stricken black shacks that surround the largely still-white rich suburbs of Joburg and Cape Town, is a sham.

They could not be more wrong. At the end of the day, Mandela’s greatest triumph was his ability to take two warring sides - black against white, National Party versus Mandela’s ANC - and make them realise that they needed each other. When South Africa was on the brink of war in 1990 as he was released from 27 years’ imprisonment, he offered peace and reconciliation. And it worked.

The South African transition from apartheid rule to democracy is today considered a “miracle” largely because of Mandela and despite the festering anger and resentment that drove many young people in those days to seek revenge against whites.

It was not an easy path to choose – or to travel. Mandela, as he himself has proclaimed, is not a saint. He fell into moments of hatred against his jailers and oppressors even as he walked out of jail in 1990.

Bill Clinton, the former US president, told the United Nations in July 2013 how he (Clinton) had raised with Mandela his decision to invite his jailer to his inauguration and bring white opposition parties into his government.

Mr Clinton asked Mandela: “Tell me the truth: when you were walking down the road that last time didn’t you hate them?”

Mandela answered: “I did. I am old enough to tell the truth ....I felt hatred and fear but I said to myself, if you hate them when you get in that car you will still be their prisoner. I wanted to be free and so I let it go.”

In 1990, Mandela told South Africa’s white Afrikaner generals (many still prepared to go to war against the ANC): “If you want to go to war, I must be honest and admit that we cannot stand up to you in the battlefield. We don’t have the resources. It will be a long and bitter struggle. Many people will die and the country may be reduced to ashes. But you must remember two things.

“You cannot win because of our numbers; you cannot kill all of us. And you cannot win because of the international community; they will rally to our support and they will stand with us.”

Instead of this route, he offered reconciliation and peace. That is Mandela’s real and essential contribution to humanity: he looked his enemy in the eye and held him close. He chose peace over war, forgiveness over vengeance. That is why today South Africa, with its problems and disputes and failures and triumphs, can afford debates about inequality and poverty. He gave us a platform, a peaceful environment, to resolve our problems, chief among them unemployment and poverty.

In the period after his release from jail in 1990 Mandela's resolve was to be tested on many occasions, and he came close to war many times.

On August 6 1990 he led a chaotic, fractious ANC national executive meeting which decided to suspend the armed struggle against the apartheid government. For many ANC cadres, this was the ultimate betrayal. In their view, taking away the threat of violence meant the ANC had lost all power against the apartheid State.

Mandela sent all ANC leaders across the country to convince the militants otherwise, and his view prevailed. Numerous other moments such as this one were to come. In all of them, despite the criticisms, Mandela chose peace over war; reconciliation over vengeance; humanity over barbarity.

When the ANC’s most popular and militant leader, Chris Hani, was murdered by a right-winger in 1993, it was Mandela who told angry youths to aim for peace, now war. When bombs went off on the eve of the 1994 elections and hundreds were murdered by security police in township violence, Mandela called for calm, not war.

And he was vindicated. The 1994 election ushered in a fragile democracy, and after that Mandela was emboldened to pursue his programme of peace and reconciliation. What followed silenced even his harshest critics. As depicted in the movie Invictus, he inspired the nation by embracing rugby – a sport considered to be that of the oppressor – and turning South Africa’s 1995 Rugby World Cup into a moment of reconciliation.

Perhaps what we saw, and admired and revered in Mandela, is this: the human instinct veers towards anger and hate, clings to resentment and grudge. In his own deeply personal actions, and in his political decisions, Mandela walked away from what is the human instinct, or what we expect to be the normal human instinct. He chose freedom from his own demons.

In doing so, he chose to take his own people along with him, and make them set aside their own demons too. He made a warring, hate-filled South Africa choose peace and reconciliation above that which was expected. He made us turn away from war.

For many of us here, there can be no greater gift than that.

How will you remember Nelson Mandela? Please email your tributes and memories to mandelatributes@telegraph.co.uk